Do you think you can walk now?"
"Away from the savages? Yes!" she said passionately. She looked
down at the dead figures of the Senecas, and she did not feel a
single trace of pity for them. Again it is necessary to consider
time and place.
"Some of my strength came back while I was lying here," she said,
"and much more of it when you drove away the Indians."
"Very well," said Henry, who had returned to the dead camp fire
with his comrades, "we must start on the back trail at once. The
surviving Senecas, joined by other Iroquois, will certainly
pursue, and we need all the start that we can get."
Long Jim picked up one of the two younger children and flung him
over his shoulder; Tom Ross did as much for the other, but the
older two scorned help. They were full of admiration for the
great woodsmen, mighty heroes who had suddenly appeared out of
the air, as it were, and who had swept like a tornado over the
Seneca band. It did not seem possible now that they, could be
retaken.
But Mary Newton, with her strength and courage, had also
recovered her forethought.
"Maybe it will not be better to go on the back trail," she said.
"One of the Senecas told me to-day that six or seven miles
farther on was a river flowing into the Susquehanna, and that
they would cross this river on a boat now concealed among bushes
on the bank.
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